5 ms·

I try to stay away from *Office suites as much as possible. It seems that whenever I use them to do anything more complicated than typing a short letter, everyt

by jre 14y ago

I try to stay away from *Office suites as much as possible. It seems that whenever I use them to do anything more complicated than typing a short letter, everything starts to fall apart and I wish I had used Latex/R/python instead. On the other hand, LibreOffice is a very helpful piece of software to edit the occasional .doc attachment.

RyanMcGreal 14y ago
Writer is Good Enough to open a Word document I've gotten from someone else, and for what I mainly do with such documents, I actually prefer Writer to Word. For my own purposes, the only office application I really find myself reaching for is the spreadsheet. I'm a big supporter of free/open source software and I run Linux on all my personal computers, so it pains me to write this - but LibreOffice Calc just doesn't come anywhere close to comparing with the functionality, stability and polish of Excel. Using it is a steady aggravation, and I'm persuaded that the problem is not due to it being different from Excel - after all, other open source applications are different from their proprietary counterparts and I find them as good or better. The problem with Calc is that it just doesn't work very well. Everything seems to take one or two more steps than the equivalent action on Excel, the defaults aren't as helpful, and the application is far more prone to freeze/crash.
- brudgers 14y ago
  Office is Excel. It trumps consideration of any other suite for many businesses because it facilitates their running. It matters on the sixth floor where the executive offices are. Data manipulation is a domain in which lean never works and Excel is the opposite of lean. Decades of development in a corporate culture that encourages adding features has made Excel excel. Trimming math functions doesn't make sense because 10,000 more functions never clutter up the user experience. Excel is a programming environment - an IDE which includes drag and drop, a REPL, and macros (with respect to the data layer). It's syntax is simple [yes, I know it wasn't invented by Microsoft] and it's power significant. It's really the crown jewel in Microsoft's portfolio. It just works.
  - kriro 14y ago
    I agree with this 100% however Excel is also grossly overused in my oppinion. I have seen many cases where companies would (theoretically) have been better off migrating a bunch of the stuff they do in Excel to their ERP system. My conclusion in most of these cases was that said ERP systems must suck (and that it's really hard to get someone, especially execs so switch IT habits) :D
    - tg3 14y ago
      Not just ERP, but in my experience people use Excel for everything - project management, data cleansing/manipulation/conversion, test scripts, status reports, etc. All things that can be done better with other tools, but for many people, it's easier to just work with a tool that they know rather than trying to learn a new tool (witness the groans every time a new $PROCESS Management Tool is introduced). Not saying it's a good or bad thing, just what I've observed.
      - RyanMcGreal 14y ago
        Excel is basically an extremely user-friendly IDE for a Turing-complete programming language.
    - brudgers 14y ago
      Tabulus claims to be lightweight ERP. http://www.tabulus.com/Home.aspx http://www.tabulus.com/Home.aspx My first engineering manager wrote letters in Lotus123. And often I had to edit them.

by jre 14y ago

RyanMcGreal 14y ago

Writer is Good Enough to open a Word document I've gotten from someone else, and for what I mainly do with such documents, I actually prefer Writer to Word. For my own purposes, the only office application I really find myself reaching for is the spreadsheet. I'm a big supporter of free/open source software and I run Linux on all my personal computers, so it pains me to write this - but LibreOffice Calc just doesn't come anywhere close to comparing with the functionality, stability and polish of Excel. Using it is a steady aggravation, and I'm persuaded that the problem is not due to it being different from Excel - after all, other open source applications are different from their proprietary counterparts and I find them as good or better. The problem with Calc is that it just doesn't work very well. Everything seems to take one or two more steps than the equivalent action on Excel, the defaults aren't as helpful, and the application is far more prone to freeze/crash.

brudgers 14y ago
Office is Excel. It trumps consideration of any other suite for many businesses because it facilitates their running. It matters on the sixth floor where the executive offices are. Data manipulation is a domain in which lean never works and Excel is the opposite of lean. Decades of development in a corporate culture that encourages adding features has made Excel excel. Trimming math functions doesn't make sense because 10,000 more functions never clutter up the user experience. Excel is a programming environment - an IDE which includes drag and drop, a REPL, and macros (with respect to the data layer). It's syntax is simple [yes, I know it wasn't invented by Microsoft] and it's power significant. It's really the crown jewel in Microsoft's portfolio. It just works.
- kriro 14y ago
  I agree with this 100% however Excel is also grossly overused in my oppinion. I have seen many cases where companies would (theoretically) have been better off migrating a bunch of the stuff they do in Excel to their ERP system. My conclusion in most of these cases was that said ERP systems must suck (and that it's really hard to get someone, especially execs so switch IT habits) :D
  - tg3 14y ago
    Not just ERP, but in my experience people use Excel for everything - project management, data cleansing/manipulation/conversion, test scripts, status reports, etc. All things that can be done better with other tools, but for many people, it's easier to just work with a tool that they know rather than trying to learn a new tool (witness the groans every time a new $PROCESS Management Tool is introduced). Not saying it's a good or bad thing, just what I've observed.
    - RyanMcGreal 14y ago
      Excel is basically an extremely user-friendly IDE for a Turing-complete programming language.
  - brudgers 14y ago
    Tabulus claims to be lightweight ERP. http://www.tabulus.com/Home.aspx http://www.tabulus.com/Home.aspx My first engineering manager wrote letters in Lotus123. And often I had to edit them.